Jacqueline Piñol of 'Bordertown' on Latinos in Hollywood and Diversity

Most people would be surprised — shocked, even — to find out that the character of the rambunctious five-year-old Pepito Gonzales in the new animated Fox comedy Bordertown is in fact voiced by a 36-year-old woman. Jacqueline Piñol wasn’t given many details when she auditioned for the part, but it was a natural fit for the seasoned actress, who remembers giving voices to anything and everything as a child.

“It’s a bit of an escape
from reality, so for me it’s super fun to create voices,” she told Vivala. “To
do kids’ voices is really easy. I use my whole body in interpreting my
character.”

The edgy series by Seth MacFarlane and Mark Hentemann takes
place in the fictitious town of Mexifornia and follows two families — one
Latino, the other led by a white border patrol agent — living in a desert town
along the U.S.–Mexico border.

Piñol, born in Queens, has had a long career in Hollywood as an on-screen and voice-over actress with roles in The Fault in our Stars, The
Call, and Bride Wars.

The half Colombian, half
Guatemalan beauty moved with her family to Los Angeles at an early age where she began booking commercial gigs. Her first television role was
as Ricky Martin’s little sister on General Hospital. A graduate of Loyola Marymount
University, Piñol has landed roles in, Ponderosa, CSI: New York, and Lincoln Heights among others.

The bright-eyed Latina with a kind, bubbly voice and the personality to match also stars in the Amazon original series Bosch, as LAPD veteran detective Julie Espinosa. Season two of the drama is set to begin in March.

“What’s
really great about Julie is that they’ve placed a Latina in such a
position of power, where her voice counts,” she said. “It’s nice to say, Hey, we can have a young Latina who is petite be a very strong woman,
who can handle an investigation, who can lead on a case. I think it’s a
good message to send overall, to have a
Latina in that role.”

But there needs to be more of those roles in Hollywood to promote diversity in the industry, according to Piñol.

“I’ve
auditioned for so many things that sometimes started off as Latina
roles and all of a sudden you find out that they want a Caucasian. I
think it starts from the top. It starts from the development age and who
the writers are,” she said. “When writers come from a completely white
American background, they can only tell stories from
that point of view.”

“In my own experience some of the roles I’ve
tried out for have been very . . . they come from a different perspective. I
think we need to motivate young writers to be more diverse and have
Latinos be writers.”

Piñol’s life on the silver screen is
buzzing, but don’t be fooled — she has plenty of other things going on
behind the scenes. The mommy-to-be is getting ready to welcome her first
child at the end of February (she and her husband chose not to have the
baby’s sex revealed to them).

She hopes to take a pause
from work once the baby arrives, but there’s one project she’ll continue
working on during that time. Piñol is directing her first documentary
film, a labor of love about saving abandoned animals. She just happens
to be a tireless animal advocate who has four dogs of her own. When she
learned more of the plight of abandoned animals in the United States,
she decided she had to share her knowledge with
others in an effort to alleviate the problem.

“I thought, What am
I going to do with this information? I decided, Why don’t I just travel
the U.S. and find out how we can spread that message out more?” she
said. The excitement in her voice is palpable as she talks about the
project. Piñol has traveled to places states such as Arizona, Alabama,
Georgia, California, and Florida to film and hopes to travel throughout the
country to take a look at how abandoned animals are treated in different
states.

“I want it to be a positive take on a very big and
negative problem. A lot of people won’t watch this documentary because
it’s too emotional, it’s heart wrenching. But there are so many things
that can be done on a very small scale.”